Citizen Journalism in Germany: Netzeitung launches Readers’ Edition

The German online news site netzeitung.de has launched an ambitious new citizen journalism project this morning: All the articles on Readers Edition will be written by its readers. To guarantee high quality, a team of moderators/editors will copy-edit and check the articles, through a ranking system the best articles will be displayed most prominently.

It’s all open, too: The technical platform is based on open source weblog software WordPress and all articles are licensed under Creative Commons (attribution non-commercial share-alike). If the main “newspaper” site netzeitung likes to publish one of the Readers Edition articles on their website, they buy the article of the author.

I had the chance to participate in the semi-closed alpha test as a moderator, and so far feedback has been great. When they went online this morning during a press talk, articles started flooding in. It’s been a craze all day!

So far, the content is all in German, but that may change, soon. (If you have something to say, go for it, but make sure to tag the article “English”.)

If you’re interested in some more details about the press talk (which was fun) and know some German, you can find Markus’ description as well as some background here.

All in all, I have to say that the Readers Edition is a pretty awesome project. Not only is it open, user-driven and simply neat, Peter Schink and his team are also taking a very laid-back, cool approach regarding potential trouble along the way. I’m glad to have the chance to be part of this and wish you guys all the best!